Cycle Reservation

[cjp]

I have cycle reservations on a couple of East Coast trains and will not now be using them.

If I go to the trouble of handing them at any station will they be cancelled so that the space is available to someone else. I am willing to do this as I know spaces get tight on these trains but I would not like waste my time for them just to be thrown in a bin.


As an aside in the Netherlands I need to buy a day pass for a bike why dont they do that over here for say a couple of pounds. They would both get revenue and some stats on usage. Enforcement is my guess - same as they dont do ticket checks on FGW suburban services.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

I have cycle reservations on a couple of East Coast trains and will not now be using them.

If I go to the trouble of handing them at any station will they be cancelled so that the space is available to someone else. I am willing to do this as I know spaces get tight on these trains but I would not like waste my time for them just to be thrown in a bin....

In short, it depends on the clerk. If the clerk does their job correctly the reservation should be cancelled.

 

[afyutr]

Do cycle reservations ever get 'enforced'? I've had them in the past and just been given a shrug when the spaces were all full.

Result = annoyed people and cycle in aisle.

 

[yorkie]

Do cycle reservations ever get 'enforced'? I've had them in the past and just been given a shrug when the spaces were all full.

Result = annoyed people and cycle in aisle.

East Coast do indeed enforce cycle reservations. If you're joining at an unstaffed station, or you are delayed, then providing there's space, they are likely to 'show discretion'. Also if you're going one stop and there's space, they may well let you on.

Once they put loads of luggage in the TGS and so there were no bike spaces available, so on production of my reservation I was able to load my bike into the power car.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

If I go to the trouble of handing them at any station will they be cancelled so that the space is available to someone else. I am willing to do this as I know spaces get tight on these trains but I would not like waste my time for them just to be thrown in a bin.

I have done this on more than one occasion. The ticket office staff might find the reservation a little odd, as it appears as a seat reservation but in coach A (Coaches for passenger use begin with B). If they realise that what they are looking at is the bike reservation then they can and will cancel it (and hopefully thank you for your thoughtfulness).

I will say that at this time of year, it is unusual for me to see another bike on an East Coast train! So demand is not 'tight' as it is in summer.

 

[cjp]

Do cycle reservations ever get 'enforced'? I've had them in the past and just been given a shrug when the spaces were all full.

Result = annoyed people and cycle in aisle.

I have been stopped from boarding at Banbury.
I have been told that in the summer when tourists had bagged all the spaces on the Plockton to Inverness line a regular commuter had to leave his bike behind....

And as my bike reservations are for late March I will hand them in.

 

[cf111]

Do cycle reservations ever get 'enforced'? I've had them in the past and just been given a shrug when the spaces were all full.

Result = annoyed people and cycle in aisle.

I have seen them enforced on the Far North Line. I have also seen a guard who was happy to phone ahead to Inverness to see if there was space on an Edinburgh service for two unreserved bikes.

 

[cjp]

I

And as my bike reservations are for late March I will hand them in.

I tried and failed.
Made a special trip to Ealing Broadway where the chap there asked "where did I buy the tickets?"
I asked "does it make a difference?" Answer came there none.
I was then told "If I cancel your (cycle) reservations then your seat reservations would/could be be cancelled as well"
"Don't bother then give them back to me"
I then had him put a number of old Chiltern vouchers put onto my Oyster just so my journey was not a complete waste of time.

Was he right about the reservations?

 

[hairyhandedfool]

If they have the same reservation reference, yes.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

If they have the same reservation reference, yes.

Interesting! That's at odds with my experience (of cancelling a bike reservation on East Coast while retaining the seat reservation), and I gave my advice to cjp based purely on my that personal experience.

Now I know that you have first hand access to reservations, so you must be referring to some actual knowledge or experience. So, I am intruiged to know if you can reconcile that experience with mine? (For example, do East Coast stations have different interface to the reservations on their own services to FSR or FTPE?).

 

[parkender102]

On Virgin Pendolino and Supervoyager you get seperate Reservation Tickets for both legs each way of your return journey and seperate Bicycle Reservations for both legs. For a Shotton Return to London this can sometimes mean 18 different tickets and reservations but means I can cancel/change any leg of the seat/Bicycle reservation individually. Usually best done at London Euston but any staffed station should be able to oblige. Apart from Woking for some reason..............they can't seem to do it.

 

[causton]

Apart from Woking for some reason..............they can't seem to do it.

Avoid SWT stations like the plague. If they can't even sell an All Line Rover (she didn't half try for over 20 minutes!) then god knows what they can actually do. Probably sell a Travelcard and that's it!

 

[Haywain]

All reservations made in a single transaction (for example cycles and seats for a return journey of several legs) will have the same reference, so the reference cannot be used to cancel one reservation as it will cancel the lot. However, most TIS will allow the cancellation by input of the reservation details rather than the reference, and this will then only cancel that part.

 

[DeeGee]

I once tried to cancel a bike reservation, Grimsby Town to Alnmouth, at GMB.

The lass behind the counter said not to worry, and that she'd keep them to give to someone else who might need them.

I never saw any cyclists get off at my train at Alnmouth. I hope nobody had been refused access because of my unused booking.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

Interesting! That's at odds with my experience (of cancelling a bike reservation on East Coast while retaining the seat reservation), and I gave my advice to cjp based purely on my that personal experience.

Now I know that you have first hand access to reservations, so you must be referring to some actual knowledge or experience. So, I am intruiged to know if you can reconcile that experience with mine? (For example, do East Coast stations have different interface to the reservations on their own services to FSR or FTPE?).

My only recent experience of cancelling reservations is through Cubic FasTis, which takes a reference to find the reservation(s) and then allows you cancel all of them, or leave them all alone. Northern are changing to Fujitsu Star currently, but I'm not certain how that deals with cancelling reservations. Other types of ticket machine may act differently.